Day: October 8, 2018

vandaliatraveler:

As Tolkien might have observed portentously in one of his sprawling, Middle-earth sagas, the time of the giants – in this case, the eastern hemlock (Tsuga canadensis) – may be soon coming to an end. These magnificent conifers, so critical to the carbon and hydrologic cycles of Appalachia’s mixed mesophytic forests, are dying in large numbers, killed off by by a double whammy of global warming and an invasive pest from Asia – the hemlock woolly adelgid – barely visible to the naked eye. As these trees become sick and die, the unique ecosystems they support are irreversibly altered. While the Southern Appalachians have

been most heavily impacted to date, the death march of the adelgids continues northward. As I stood in the shadow of the great hemlocks in Cathedral State Park over the weekend, I hoped that this small stand of virgin forest would survive as a testament to their ancient power to transform the world around them – a real magic as special as anything in Tolkien’s imagined universe.  

vandaliatraveler:

Autumn Berries, Volume 4: Small Cranberry. In the cold sphagnum bogs of Appalachia’s higher mountains, small cranberry (Vaccinium oxycoccos) sends out delicate, vine-like stems with small, leathery leaves that root where they come into contact with the damp peat. A trailing perennial shrub in the heath (Ericaceae) family, the plant is found throughout the Northern Hemisphere and as far south as the mountain bogs of West Virginia and Virginia in Central Appalachia. Small cranberry forms fragile, drooping pink flowers in the spring. These flowers are replaced by lustrous red berries from late August through October; they contrast sharply with the dull-brown-red sphagnum of late autumn. The edible berries have a familiar, sweet-tart flavor and were once favored by Native Americans as an accompaniment to wild game. The above photos were taken along the South Prong Trail in the Red Creek Plains of the Monongahela National Forest and the Cranesville Swamp Preserve.

vandaliatraveler:

The above photos are from my hike yesterday on the South Prong Trail in the Red Creek Plains, adjacent to the Dolly Sods Wilderness in the Monongahela National Forest. These areas, along with Roaring Plains and Flatrock Plains, comprise the highest plateau in the eastern United States. They are places of otherwordly beauty, where the ancient bedrock has been heaved up in huge, stacked slabs, as if arranged by some primordial being into primitive temples of sandstone and shale. Around these ancient temples are gathered the artifacts of the last ice age: forests of red spruce and sphagnum bogs with plants more at home in Maine and Nova Scotia than in the Mid-Atlantic region. It’s easy to forget that the many treasures of the plains are part of a regenerating landscape. The plateau was scraped clean to the bone by reckless logging practices and subsequent man-made fires at the turn of the last century. Nature’s resiliency and will to endure never fail to amaze me.